Patrick Dossett | How to Develop a Growth Mindset & Healthy Habits to Live Your Best Life from a Former Navy SEAL & the Co-Founder of Madefor
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Patrick Dossett delves deep into human potential and human performance to send a strong message that you are capable of more than you think is possible. Wellness and well-being can be accessible, enjoyable, actionable, and essentially life-changing. Create that change now through small steps starting being tuning into this conversation.
Key Takeaways from This Episode
Three common attributes in SEAL training that relates to real life
Madefor’s mission and its value proposition in the market
Common blockers in relation to mindset and performance
How meditation and mindful breathing impacts mindset
Madefor programs and practices for individuals
Disclaimer: All information and views shared on the Live Greatly podcast are purely the opinions of the authors, and are not intended to provide medical advice or treatment recommendations. The contents of this podcast are intended for informational and educational purposes only. Always seek the guidance of your physician or other qualified health professionals when you have any questions regarding your specific health, changes to diet and exercise, or any medical conditions.
About Patrick Dossett
Patrick Dossett is the co-founder of Madefor along with Blake Mycoskie who is also the Founder of TOMs. Madefor has a diverse collective of experts, scientists, and clinicians dedicated to helping you achieve greater wellbeing – including Madefor Lead Scientific Advisor, Dr. Andrew Huberman.
Before Madefor, Dossett served in various leadership roles, first as an officer in the US Navy SEAL teams and later in technology and non-profit, to create positive change at scale. Dossett holds a bachelor of science degree in Oceanography from the U.S. Naval Academy, a master’s in business administration from the Wharton School of Business, and is the recipient of numerous awards and commendations for his service and leadership.
Dossett currently resides in Los Angeles, CA, with his wife, three children, and their cat, Kula.
Connect with Patrick
Website: Madefor
LinkedIn: Patrick Dossett
About Vegamour
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Kristel Bauer, the Founder of Live Greatly, is on a mission to help people thrive personally and professionally. She is a corporate wellness expert, Integrative Medicine Fellow, Keynote Speaker, TEDx speaker & contributing writer for Entrepreneur.
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Episode Transcript
Disclaimer
Now for a quick disclaimer, all of the information and views shared on the Live Greatly podcast are purely the opinions of the authors. They are not medical advice or treatment recommendations. The contents of this podcast are intended for informational and educational purposes only. Always seek the guidance of your physician or qualified health professional for any recommendations specific to you or for any questions you have regarding your specific health, your sleep patterns, changes to diet and exercise, or any medical conditions.
Kristel (Guest’s Introduction)
This episode is all about cultivating a mindset to thrive. I chatted this week with Patrick Dossett, who's the CEO of Madefor. So Patrick and Blake Mycoskie, who you may know as the founder of Toms, are the co-founders of Madefor, which offers you a step-by-step toolkit for training you to thrive. And they're also working alongside a team of subject matter experts in the fields of neuroscience and positive psychology, including their lead scientific advisor, Dr. Andrew Huberman. So Patrick, prior to founding made for, was an officer in the US Navy seal teams. So he's going to be sharing his insights on how to optimize your mindset, how he was able to get through that training, and the different links that he saw for people who were able to be successful through the Navy seal program and how that can be translated to having a mindset, to support yourself, to thrive and to live your best life. I'm so excited about this episode. Let's jump into it and welcome Patrick to the show.
Kristel:
Pat, thank you so much for taking some time with me today. I'm really, really excited to chat.
Patrick:
Thanks for having me, Kristel. Looking forward to the conversation.
Kristel:
Yeah, for sure. So I love what you're doing with Madefor. I'm really, really excited to learn more about it. But before we dive into that, I want to find out how you went from being a Navy seal to doing what you're doing now. So can you give me a little bit of a backstory?
Patrick:
Yeah, that's a great question. So I think one of the things that I took away from my time in the seal teams and informs why and how we built Madefor was when I started seal training, we had 220 very strong, very capable, very fit, very determined individuals that had worked very hard, uh, even just to get started in seal training. So everyone had everything they needed to be successful, but over the course of training in the, in the first part of seal training is known as basic underwater demolition school.
It's about eight months long. Over the first few weeks, we went from 220 down to 150. And in the fifth week of training, we went from 150 to 36. And then, ultimately graduated 17 out of that original 220. And the thing that struck me about those 17 people they were rather unremarkable. You wouldn't have been able to pick them out from a lineup.
And in fact, all of the biggest, fastest, strongest people, those that most look the part, were some of the first to quit and to go away. So that was the first time that it had been impressed upon me in a very substantial way that mindset plays a pivotal and critical role in performance, and with the right mindset and some foundational practices, you can unlock more potential than maybe you realized you had.
And so that continued to be reinforced over my time in the military. And then, when I got out, I went to graduate school, and I was fortunate enough to sit in on a class taught by a woman named Dr. Angela Duckworth. And the course was taught at Penn, and it was an introduction to the field of positive psychology.
Before this time, I had never I wasn't familiar with this work and what they presented was in any health intervention, be it physical, behavioral, mental, whatever type of intervention you're trying to engage on someone. There are really two sides to the equation. One side is focusing on harm reduction, minimizing downside risk.
It's the side of the equation. That is probably more of an avoidance side. So these are the things that you stopped doing, the things you avoid. The other side of the equation is what are the things that you can be in pursuit of that are aligned with the way that our brains and our bodies are designed, that help us bring out the best inside us.
So these are habits, they're mindsets, they're even things, our environment that we can tweak and adjust. And what I found fascinating about that field is not only there was thousands of studies that have been done and lots of great research, and they put forward some very compelling cases around that area and why they were recommending the things they're recommending, but much of what they talked about map to what I saw those same 17 individuals leveraging the in the Seal teams.
And so, we probably have a different lexicon. We're not there. You're not going to hear Seals. Talk about gratitude a lot, or some of these other things that may be on the surface are seemingly soft. But when you dig down a level deeper, you find that people are that we're leveraging the same, the same things that can help people thrive and unlock potential.
So fast forward a couple of years, I knew I was really interested in this space, and I wanted to work on something in it. I didn't know quite what it was, and my friend Blake Mycoskie and I were off on a surf trip together. And we were talking about different businesses or things that we would like to work on someday.
And one of the things that I shared was I really love this idea of human potential and human performance and helping people realize that they're capable of doing more than they thought possible. I didn't know what form that would take, but right away, Blake was passionate, interested. We're very aligned on this, on this mission of if we can help individuals show up better for themselves and their lives, that in turn is going to lift everyone else up around them in the process.
And that seemed to be something worthwhile to pursue. And so we started working on Madefor. We brought Dr. Andrew Huberman along the outset to help us design the program, build the advisory board and ultimately deliver something that was not only fun and actionable, and interesting but also, and ultimately effective.
And so that's the brief synopsis made a little bit long about how we got here.
Kristel:
Amazing. Okay. So I have a lot of questions trying to decide where do I want to start? Well, one, I'm curious, how did you meet Blake? And you said you guys were surfing. So were you guys just like friends through acquaintances or what's the backstory there? How did you two meet?
Patrick:
Yeah. Yeah. So Blake and I are both originally from Texas. He's from Arlington; I'm from Dallas, but, um, our families have known each other for a long time. His, his father's a physician. So is mine. They had worked together. I think my dad's actually operated on number of people in Blake's family.
And so, we had close family ties. We had never had an opportunity, opportunity to connect in person until about six or seven years ago. And when we finally met, we hit it off right off the bat and really aligned around this love of being outdoors and in nature and active. And so surfing was a, was a big component of that.
And every year we try to do a trip with a small group of our friends, where we typically go surfing and fishing and, um, those sorts of things. And so this was one of those trips where uh, where Madefor was born.
Kristel:
Okay. Very cool. So that was one of my questions. Now, going back a little bit, you were talking about when you're in the Navy Seals and the training, and that just blew my mind how the numbers got so small, and you talked about, you know, mindset or I’m not sure if that was in that same sentence, but eventually talked about mindset.
So now, knowing what, you know, now, looking back on that, do you see any certain qualities that the group that made it through shared that you can kind of identify that could translate to other things as well?
Patrick:
Yeah, I think there are a few things here.
One, and again, you know, you're not going to hear gratitude talked a lot about in the seal teams, but I think the most powerful definition of gratitude that I've heard is that it's an orientation to recognize and celebrate the good in life, no matter the circumstance or situation.
So in that respect, gratitude is very much a mindset. It's this circuitry that we can build. And no matter the challenge that we're facing, we can find a way to orient towards a position of identifying what's still good. What's within my control and then really leaning into that. And so I think as you're going through seal training, you’re forced. It's a forcing function for developing really robust circuitry as it relates to gratitude because it's not a matter of if, but when the instructors are going to find a thing that is really painful for you, whether it's fatigue, not sleeping, it's cold, it's running, doing long-distance running or swimming or obstacle courses.
They're going to find your pain point and they're going to keep pushing on it until you either figure out a way to work through that. Or you decide that, Hey, I can't continue. And so that I think gratitude is a big component of that. I think the other thing is this recognition of that and again, I don't know that, that people would use this language inside the teams, but this idea that you control the finish line and you can move that finish line as far out as you want, or as close in as you want, that it's entirely subjective and under your control and in doing so, you're able to move that finish line to a point that feels not only inspirational to you but also feels achievable.
And so I think that's really important. You, you take something like hell week, where you're awake for five and a half days, and you're cold, you're wet, you're tired. You're running everywhere with a boat on your head and carrying telephone poles. And you're doing all the things that, all the things that they expected you.
And you’re forced as you're going through that training too. Sometimes you're thinking, Hey, I can make it to Wednesday or I could make it to Tuesday or I can make it to the next meal. Sometimes it is. I look up and I've got this boat on my head and it feels like my neck's about to break. And I'm just entirely spent.
I can see 10 feet in front of me. And I'm pretty sure I can take 10 more steps. And so that becomes, that becomes the new finish line. You get there and then you continue to play that game. So I think that's something else that becomes critically important for a common attribute amongst those folks. And then I would say the third thing is just having a bigger intention or mission to why you're doing what you're doing.
And so staying really connected to that. Like, people come into the military for lots of different reasons. Some for some it's about service for some it's about, you know, adventure, some it's about proving something to themselves or to someone else, whatever that thing is for you, figuring out what that is and allowing that to be your fuel when you encounter challenges and to buffer you against the adversity that you're certain to face it at various points in time.
So I think those are, those are three things that are universally applicable, I think, to anyone, regardless of your situation in the military or not, but certainly, something that I would say is our common attributes amongst those that are successful in the, uh, in seal training and beyond.
Kristel:
So for yourself, what was your mission? What did you, I'm assuming that that was part of your journey? What kind of anchored you to be able to get through it?
Patrick:
I was, this is probably a longer response than you want, but when I was in seventh grade, I read a book about the Seal teams. It was written by a gentleman named Dick Marcinko, who just passed away recently, but he was this larger-than-life figure in the teams.
And he wrote this book called Rogue Warrior. And for me, when I read this book, I was just impacted in a visceral way. I knew right away that man, this is an amazing adventure, working alongside amazing people, doing big, important missions that matter with small groups of people having large outsize effects.
And in some ways, as I was reading this book, that also seemed like the hardest, possible thing that anyone could ever do. And as I was growing up, my dad always championed this message to me of “Hey, 99.99% of the decisions you face, there's going to be an easy way and there's going to be a hard way, always take the hard way and things will work out”.
And so I think I've probably internalized that to such a degree that when I, when I read this book, I said, all right, this is the hardest thing. That's what I'm going to do. And so for me, it became about service, it became about sacrifice. It became around ultimately being a part of something that was bigger than myself and, um, doing so alongside some individuals that were very well, very committed and also the greatest embodiment of being a quiet professional that you can imagine.
So this constant community of putting the team and the mission and the country and the bigger things over personal interests. That to me was the fuel that, that I leaned into as I was going through group training and beyond.
Kristel:
Amazing. So now let's segue a little bit into what you're doing these days with Madefor, and I would love to hear about what your mission is, and I'm so incredibly important, especially with everything that's been happening over the past few years. So yeah, if you could just share a little bit about that. That would be wonderful.
Patrick:
Yeah. So, you know, we've been working on Madefor, for almost five years now we spent about a year developing a program alongside, like I said, Andrew Huberman and a number of other advisors, John Ratey, Ruth Benca, Samer Hattar, Dave Phillips, Rory Cordial, just really amazing deep domain experts, but working alongside them to figure out.
What are the ways that we can make the science and the steps of wellness and wellbeing, both from a physical standpoint and a mental standpoint, accessible, interesting, actionable what ultimately effective, and creating lasting change for someone. So we spent a year in development a year in beta, serving around a thousand members across the country.
And over the last couple of years, we've worked with over 11, 11,000 members to date. So all 50 states from 17 to 82 years of age, we're in 42 countries now. And our members, our mission, just to put a point on it when we're able to help someone direct their attention and effort in the smallest possible way.
And so we're talking, you know, a few minutes, a day, two to five minutes every day when they're able to direct their attention, direct their effort, and in that process grow a greater sense of self-agency, confidence, control over their physical and mental health outcomes, to cultivate a more resilient mindset, and to feel more capable in their ability to navigate all of life's challenges.
And grow closer to the things that they care most about. That's really what this is all about for us. And so we want to help individuals show up better in their lives for themselves, but also lift those around them up in the process. And, um, yeah, it's been really exciting to work on and to see how with some very basic things we're able to help people unlock some surprising benefits.
Kristel:
I love it. So I would like to hear some like tangible ideas or things that are involved in that specific to let's say, you know, mindset. If someone's looking to support a more resilient mindset, a more empowering mindset, which I think everybody can benefit from, and everybody can work on it to one degree or another.
But what, what would be a place to start? That like a simple thing that made far away would guide someone towards.
Patrick:
Yeah. Well, I think, you know, there are. I would say there are, there's a few blockers that oftentimes our members come in with as it relates to mindset and performance and one, and this is probably the most common one is this idea that is this idea of perfection and this pursuit of perfection.
And that I'm going to do everything perfectly and I'm going to do this right. And this is going to be, this is going to be my opportunity to finally do everything perfectly and get everything that I want out of this. And so the marketplace wants to sell us these quick fixes and these like, you know, one size fits all solutions and these, um, these things that over promise and under deliver.
And so people come in expecting, Hey, I'm going to do this perfectly. And I think this idea of perfection over progress is a mindset that we help our members break in small ways over time. But when people start to realize and recognize that, Hey, we're all human life gets a vote. We're not machines. And it doesn't matter if you're a Navy seal or if you're a physician or physician's assistant or an attorney or whatever your role is, or a stay-at-home parent.
We're all going to come up, come up short at some point, and where we can identify ways to extend ourselves. Self-compassion and grace, and be a better teammate to ourselves and ultimately play the long game in life. This idea of focusing on the process and progress, we're going to end up in a much better place than we otherwise would.
And so I think that's something that's really important that we, um, that we continue to reinforce it. Our members are going through the pro that through the program. The other thing that I would say, people come into the program with is something of some sort or some uh, semblance of a fixed mindset.
And so I know you're familiar with this work out of Stanford. Uh, Carol Dweck talks about the idea of fixed first growth mindset and that at any given point in time, both reside within us, but certain conditions and certain factors maybe causes one mindset to merge over the other, but just even the knowledge that there are these two mindsets.
And so a fixed mindset is one where I have a rigid set of abilities and these are my innate talents and I'm good at math. And I'm good at baking cookies and I'm good at driving my car really fast through the neighborhood, but I'm not good at everything else. I don't do spreadsheets. I don't do whatever. That sort of mindset limits us, right?
And it causes us when we encounter friction or we encounter setbacks to view that friction or those setbacks as signals that we're ultimately not going to be successful in achieving what we want to do. That it's, it's in some way, a sign of our lack of ability to do something. Now on the other end of it is a growth mindset.
So a growth mindset is very much this mindset of curiosity and exploration and a recognition that our talents and our abilities aren't fixed. That they're malleable and they can change over time. And that when we encounter friction and trying to reach our goals or our destinations, that, that friction is not a sign of our inability, but rather a sign of this is what progress feels like.
And so can we reward that behavior? And understand that that is actually a benefit and not a detriment to us. And so, um, that's another, you know, mindset that we went into that we see a lot of benefit from, uh, from our members on. And then I think the final one is really just this recognition that there is not one way.
And despite what people may encounter in mainstream media or social media, wherever. There isn't one way to live life. There's not one path to optimal wellness. There's probably a better way. And part of what Madefor does is help our members unlock what the best way is for them. So they engage some very foundational practices, all grounded in science, but we all start to understand that, Hey, my journey is unique to me.
My situation is unique. My stressors are unique, and also the way that some practices resonate more so than others is also unique to me. But, so we help members gain confidence and clarity, and conviction around curating their own path towards optimal wellness. And yeah. Anyways, those are, those are three of the, I would say the mindset shifts that underlie the, um, the practices of the program.
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Kristel:
I love that. And I totally agree that there's not a one size fits all. And I know my personal experience is when I started meditating years ago and I wasn't a meditator before that. I started meditating and I noticed some really significant changes.
And then I was like, everybody needs to do this. Everyone needs to meditate. It's going to help everybody. And what I realized is that people find that quiet space and that rejuvenative time in different ways. So some people may not enjoy meditating and their meditation might be being out in the garden, or going for a walk or, you know, doing something that isn't my idea of, you know, necessarily what they need.
So that was a journey for me to understand that, that my view of what works for me is not necessarily going to translate to everybody else. You know, everyone else is going to have to find out what works for them. So it sounds like. But you are doing and what your team's doing is really tailoring things to the individual.
Is that appropriate?
Patrick:
Yeah. Yeah. Why I love that you highlighted meditating and I think it's such a, um, such a great way to communicate this. If we have a whole month, that's focused on breath. And so we talk about breath as this powerful internal tool that we all have, that we can leverage at any point in time to direct our mind or our body to match the environment that we find ourselves in.
And so we talk about the ways that you can direct your attention that are proven through evidence-based research. We talked about the ways that you can direct your breath to adjust your physiology in real-time. And it's just a different way to talk about this tool that we all possess.
And so I think what we do and made for us, we expose people. We expose our members to principles of science-backed principles of wellness and these foundational practices. And then we give them these small challenges on the order of a few minutes, a day. Where they're able to engage a practice and engage your principal and see how it affects them, right? One of the Dr. Andrew Huberman, one of the areas that he studies is this idea of neuroplasticity that we have the ability to self-direct brain change over the entire course of our lives. And if you view the brain as a proxy for mindset, behaviors, patterns, then we can change. We can change our lives at any point in time.
But past the age of 25, there are really only two models of brain change. One is through short, intense experience. These could be positive or negative things like the birth of a child or a car accident or a loved one getting married. But by definition, these are the exception. They're not the norm. The other model of brain changes through small, consistent actions done over time with awareness of cause and effect.
So I do this thing. This is the effect that it has, and that's very much the journey that we take our members do, where they start to understand, oh, I do this behavior. This is what science says to the benefits of it. It's dose-dependent, and it's going to be unique to the individual, but here are the benefits.
I engage it. This is the effect that it had on me and where we end up with our members. And this is Andrew's words, not mine, but he said, you know, the goal of Madefor isn't to get to the end of this program and have a checklist of 10 things you have to do every day to live your best life. But the goal really is to make your reflexive self your best self so that you're moving through your day in a different fashion and feeling better, engaging conflict, connection, challenges, opportunities, just differently without, uh, with a little bit less effort and, uh, in a more of a natural way.
Kristel:
I love that. I know my, my personal development journey when I started to learn about all these different avenues.
And when I got into integrative medicine, I had a checklist in my mind, I need to do this. I need to meditate for this amount of time. I've got to make sure I do this. And I was doing chi gong. And I've had to do that, but I do this. I was really diligent. If I put my mind to something, I can be very focused, but then it got to a point where I was like, is this really helping me? Or is it now adding stress?
Like, I feel like I have to do this. I have to do that. So I loosened up, I relaxed and I found more of my own personal balance then. And it's like that resonated with what you were just sharing with Dr. Huberman. And I'm wondering with these challenges that you give people. Are they, do they build off of each other, like, is it, you get this one challenge and then they get another challenge and then they get another challenge.
Or how does that work? Is it like, are you, are there expectations that people are supposed to be doing these things like layered on top of each other? Does that make sense? Does my question make sense?
Patrick:
Yeah, no. Yeah. It's a good, it's a great question. So the way that we deliver the program is every month focuses on a different foundational practice.
So we, we've written these really nice guidebooks that are, you know, they're 35, 40 pages take 20 minutes to read through, but deliver the science and the story of the benefits of, uh, of a given practice really designed to get someone engaged and excited about doing the challenge that month. And then we pair that with generally a 21-day challenge designed around what's the smallest thing we could get you to do each day for my attention and attention standpoint and an effort standpoint where you would see the benefits of your actions.
And so, in between challenges, where we ask for our members is to reflect on what are the connections that you made? What are the lessons that you learned? What do you want to internalize and carry forward? And let's set the challenge down and we've got physical tools that our members, um, sometimes like to get offline and into action around these challenges.
And so we have a whole offline model of the program if someone wants to do it offline. But the idea is let's when the challenge is over, let's set it down right. Move on to the next one. But what we see from our members is that they start to see that these challenges while discrete are not, they're not, not interconnected.
And so you can imagine something like hydration, nutrition, movement, social connection, nature of breath, how all of those could at some point become one practice that could be all connected. And I would say it just to speak to another, another through-line of the program. And I love, I love the way that, that you were bringing this up, that you, you had this checklist.
And I think this is really important because. Oftentimes, we get so focused on external cuing for what we should be doing or how we should be performing. Whether it's looking at an app, a screen, a device, or even a checklist that we have. And we said, Hey, this checklist is dictating my day or dictating what I do that when we tune externally too much, we forget to understand what's going on on the inside and connect with our most powerful technology, which is our brain and our body.
And so the scientific term for this is Interoceptive Awareness. Can you tune into, sense into the signals and cues your body is sending to you and how best to respond to those in real-time to bring out the best in yourself. And so that is a through-line of every month that made for, and again, it doesn't matter if you're getting out into nature or you're connecting in a certain way or your breathing or your, um, you know, engaging sleep in a certain way.
You start to notice that, oh, I get, I become a better steward of my own brain and body and understand how to respond, to bring out my best. I love
that, you know, these are all really great insights. And if you were to give a challenge to person listening, obviously, you know, this would be very general things.
You don't know what their backstory is, but just in general simple challenge, what would be something that you could come up with?
Kristel:
I think in the simplest challenge that I could give someone and it's simple, but simple doesn't mean easy would be to write out an intention for something that you want to, something that you care about, that if you're able to achieve this intention and this intention is not, Hey, I want to run a marathon or I want to lose 15 pounds, or I want to, um, you know, make whatever a thousand extra dollars.
This intention really is, what is the thing that I want to change about the way that I'm showing up in my life? And if I am able to achieve that, and it's the right intention when I'm able to achieve it, why do I care about that? What happens as a result of achieving that intention? If I'm showing up differently, if I'm more present, I'm more connected on whatever the thing is for that individual.
If I'm able to achieve that, why is that? Why will that make my life better? And why will that make the lives of those around me better? And so I would start with an intention and put pen to paper. This is I think, a really important step, but write out what that intention is, and then look for the smallest possible thing that you can do every day that helps you bring you in line with that intention.
And so this could be taking a sip of water. It could be stepping outside. It could be, um, you know, turning off your phone when you're, um, you know, during bedtime with your kids, whatever that small thing is, and then just be attuned and aware to how has that small thing changing me over time.
Like, what is the effect that that's having? And I would say again, these are, it's not a, it's not a simple, uh, challenge, but is one that, um, I think is, or it is a simple challenge, but does it simple? Doesn't apply easy, but it's certainly one that I think could be incredibly beneficial for anyone listening.
Kristel:
Right. And those simple changes can have a really powerful impact, especially if they're sustained. So well, this has been amazing. I've learned a lot, and we are coming towards the end, but before we close, I want to do a quick wellness lightning round. Before we get to that. Anything else you'd like to share?
I'm going to be putting links in the episode details so people can check out Madefor and your social media, but anything else, Pat, that we didn’t cover?
Patrick:
No, you know, I would just, I would stress to anyone listening that change is possible. And if you want to change, it doesn't matter where you're at. It doesn't matter. Your, you know what you've done in the past, that change is possible, and it's possible because the small steps that you take can some, um, to great effect.
And so that means that I, you know, for myself, I've got three kids under three, um, you know, we've been under lockdown in the last couple of years with COVID and new babies. We've got a new business. There's been a lot of challenges that have come, but I've been able to, no matter what the challenges were, I've been able to carve out a couple of minutes each day where I can tend to myself and provide some self-care, and that has allowed me to care about and care for and serve all the other things that I care most about.
So I just, I offer that because I want to give everyone the confidence in their own ability to, to create the change in our life that thereafter it's possible and never underestimate the power of the small steps, the small steps add up and in ways that can be incredibly transformative.
Kristel:
Love it. It's amazing. And, um, I'm going to be using some of that information you just shared with me for one of your wellness, lightning-round questions. I'm going to tailor it. Just you Pat. So are you ready?
Patrick:
Probably not. Then let's do it anyways.
Kristel:
Okay. So what's a change you're currently trying to make like a personal challenge that you're working on.
Let's see personal challenge that I'm working on right now, having coming out of having a lot of young kids; we just got our son, just turned one and, you know, starting to reclaim a little bit about a little bit of my own time back in the day. And so, for me, I'm at my best when I'm outdoors and active and being able to do really challenging physical things.
And so that's something that's been important to me is starting to carve back out little bits of time to get outdoors and be active. And so I made a deal with my wife a couple of weeks ago, where I would give her one morning off a week where I would take the kids in so she could go do whatever she wants to do, and in return, I get one morning.
So that's turned into getting an ocean swim every week, and sometimes I'm able to get Andrew out there for those. And so that's been. That's the thing that, uh, that I'm working on.
Kristel:
Oh, that's great. So are you an Andrew Blake aisle? All in California?
Patrick:
Yes. Blake used to be here.
He's not in California anymore, but Andrew and I are, um, yeah, live close by one another.
Kristel:
That's amazing. Okay. So one more question for you. Last one, knowing what you know today, what advice would you give to yourself from 10 years ago?
Patrick:
That's a good question. I think I would be two things. I think that would be kinder to myself.
Again, kind of going back in line with being your own best teammate, but too, I would, I would take more time to celebrate the wins and the progress. And this is something that I, I think that I continue to work on, but. When you get so focused on mission and what's next and what's next, sometimes you forget to look back and and see all the great work that you've done or the progress that you've made.
And it's important that we take time to do that because, um, in taking time to recognize the progress and celebrating those wins, you're helping build additional momentum that is going to compel you to future wins. And so I think that's something that I would do a better job of is taking time to stop, reflect, and savoring those wins and then use that as fuel to to go off at that point.
Kristel:
I love it. That's great advice. You know, I can use that too. I think everybody can use that. Like enjoy the journey, right. And, and just put it all in perspective and appreciate each step along the path while this has been amazing. Pat, thank you so much. I learned a lot. Thank you for taking some time with me today.
Patrick:
Amazing. Thanks for having me. I really enjoyed the conversation.